Some of my most treasured home-design clips are included in a lavish new book
When it comes to kitchens, those that raise the high-end aspiration bar in terms of features, looks and equipment are found in photos on the pages of a handful of influential publications. In recent years, Town & Country magazine has been a favorite and one of the most important sources.
Here are some of my most treasured clips neatly organized into a handsome new book, just out this week. 
At Home with Town & Country (Hearst Books, $60) compiles features published during the tenure of editor Pamela Fiori, who moved on recently but whose sense of quality and luxury are preserved in this collection.
The book also offers a glimpse into 30 homes of social figures, celebrities (Mariska Hargitay), and designers (Bunny Williams, Sherri Donghia, Ralph Lauren), both in America and other parts of the globe.
And, of course, there are some wonderful kitchens. For the 20 x 32-foot beauty [top photo] in a 1940s Connecticut stone manor house, designer Victoria Hagan fashioned an addition matched to the rest of the home, finished with quarter-sawn oak floors, wood beams and stucco walls.
The centerpiece is an 11-1/2-foot long, custom black and brass Bonnet French range set into a windowed niche lined with vintage terracotta tiles and surmounted by a curtain-like brass and copper hood. The range, which has a six figure price tag, boasts a salamander (broiler) built-in hot water bath, plancha, induction unit, four burners and a gas oven. Two additional electric wall ovens are devoted to baking. Ivory-colored cabinets are combined with limed wood surfaces.
The owner uses two of the kitchen’s three sinks for clean up and the third made from pietra cardoza, with matching counters, primarily for flowers. The kitchen table seats ten and doubles as informal family dining room as well as for entertaining. The designer touts the functionality of the layout adding that “kitchen design is about the details.”
Architect James D’Auria’s Long Island kitchen also includes a dining table with comfortable chairs – a dual use of his 25- by 25-foot space. The unassuming room includes a farm sink (note the imposing high arc sprayer faucet) on the same wall as a big-pro-range. Across the aisle is a marble-topped island that offers counter-height seating on the non-working side. Architecture in the room is simplified by the use of white for walls, ceiling, kitchen cabinets and counters, while furniture and the pair of French doors are anchored by the wood-tones of the floor.
An 1833 Greek Revival school house, also on Long Island, was purchased and rebuilt by interior and home furnishings designer Thomas O’Brien — who currently is offering collections at Target. O’Brien’s kitchen was gutted and refitted with white cabinets as well as the same glossy white walls and ceilings used throughout the other rooms. A vintage and antique lover, O’Brien combined traditional fixtures and vintage clocks with the crisp lines of an open work table opposite the range. The handsome marble backsplash ends with a bracketed shelf fashioned from the same white stone.
While At Home with Town & Country might occasionally leave the enthusiastic home renovator hankering after the source for this faucet or that ottoman, it is packed with decorating ideas provided by views of homes with important features — be it art, architecture, the designer, furnishings or the occupants themselves.
